We had a small group of about 30 people that played once a month. Mostly 20 and 30 somethings. My uncle brought my 14 year old twitchy fingers into the fold right as Team Arena was a thing. I'll never forget the pettiness of the organizer as he rolled his wheelchair between the tables and claimed the "wheel" caught my power cable. They couldn't handle the teabags. What a time...
We probably had 30/40 person ones and then once a year a big one of like 60-70 at a hotel conference room. Even got some prizes like video cards from Voodoo and Nvidia.
We had to dedicated the first 2 hrs to file swapping so that would stop happening. Good times.
There was a small window of time between P2P file sharing, and accessible internet video (pre-youtube by about 3 years). In this window, quake tournaments were like a money laundering operation for porn sharing.
Wow, where was that? Thats A LOT of people. Never even heard of them that big back then.
A few of these pictures are definitely from Dreamhack Jönköping.
What's fascinating is that during this era, Dreamhack and The Gathering were competing to see who was bigger. Ultimately Dreamhack won since The Gathering refused to move to a bigger venue, they hit max capacity of 5200 in 1998 and just remained there. But there's never any pictures from The Gathering in these albums.
back in the days also small regions got huge LANs like that in sportshalls etc - not just the big name ones (at least in germany where i was)
Quakecon/CPL Dallas were huge
Gaylord , texas.... I remember how confused my dad was when I said I was going to Gaylord Texas for cs tournament
Before edgelords, there were gaylords
I always wanted to go to Quakecon, but sadly never made it. Definitely had some lesser LAN parties with the homies though over the years.
Assembly in Helsinki gathered nearly 30 000 visitors in its best years, and still gathers a pretty good amount of people.
It started in 1992 with 700 visitors but the numbers started to grow quickly. 3000 people in 1994, 4200 in 1995…
Dude I had those mushrooms as my wallpaper back in the day! Digital blasphemy for the win!
I’m guessing Quakecon as the one picture with the giant projector screen at the front has Quake III on it
That big one is actually Dreamhack in Sweden been there many times during this period 5000+ participants during this one
Holy shit - Quake III Arena was awesome! I almost forgot about that game for some reason.
It still sorta lives on in Quake Live, which you can play out of your browser. Only like 3 to 400 people play if I remember correctly
1.21 jiggawatts to be precise.
What did you call me?
What the hell is a jiggawatt?
It’s heavy doc.
There’s that word again, heavy. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?
That’s my line!
And a lot of heat! It's my era, but I never did anything like this. imagine the smell...
Worth it though. Looks epic.
I haven't thought about Bawls energy drinks in ages really. Thanks for the flashback to those blue bottles with the bumps all over them.
Jolt cola walked so that Bawls could run
Microcenter has bawls
Bawls was really good I thought. Do they still make it I wonder? I’ll have to google
Literally just saw a crate of Bawls at the Microcenter near me the other week. I was taken aback
Yep I buy one every time I leave
Omg, I do the same thing. Always grab one on the way through
They have stocked it for years
Yes they even sell online.
Still available near me, usually in smaller independent grocery stores or drug stores.
Hahaha first thing I noticed too. Guarantee someone there had a ThinkGeek subscription
Think geek was awesome
Holy shit Bawls cola is some 2006 core memory
I loved bawls
I used to love Bawls. Still do, but I used to too.
Are Jolt and Bawls connected somehow? I hated Jolt. Bawls tasted like creme soda to me, unlike any other energy drink.
Everyone knows it was all about getting a can of Surge
64mg of caffeine.. not even enough energy to make it down my driveway now
Before my time but looks like the good old days
In high school we would have smaller versions of these lan party’s and maybe 6-8 of us would bring our computers to a friends house and game all weekend.
The internet offers so much but there are certain aspects like this that it can’t replicate.
I’ve always felt this kind of nostalgia for an era I didn’t get to live in.
Funnily enough, my first exposure to Starcraft was on Highschool Library computers.
This was the mid-10s and some genius saved a bunch of ripped 90s classics like Starcraft (Broodwar), Fallouts 1 and 2, and the original X-COM into the shared Temp folder.
This was only on the older models that were faced away from the library-aids’ desk, and while a some of the rips were obtuse to work, good times were had by all.
They even put Tor on the dang things.
Sadly, all of the computers were converted to boot directly to Chrome. Another end of another era.
If I see an opportunity to do the same (setting up rips on school computers) one day, I will. What’s all work with no play, eh?
These were great times. Warcraft 2 and eventually Starcraft. Giving someone shit in person is so much better than through a headset.
Was a lot of fun. Relatively easy too to get in games once you got all setup, because games supported LAN back then. 0 ping/latency took some getting used to though, didn’t have to lead rockets and grenades as much since you didn’t have 120-150 ping
minecraft still has lan ig this is what it's for, i knew it was for nearby computer network sharing but i wasn't exactly sure why cuz this was before i was born so all my life we've had wifi and other forms of connection
WiFi is still a LAN, it’s just an alternative to an Ethernet cable + switch setup. LAN just means it’s the local network, WAN is “online” outside your network.
Weird. I didn’t realize this was something I had taken for granted haha (I’m feeling really old at 30 rn).
I highly suggest you give a LAN party a try! So much fun!
They still do these but they are definitely not as fun anymore. I went to one in a large field house with like 300 people. They have tournaments going on, but most of the time you are playing with people on the other side of the room, so it's really just like playing online but in a worse setting. Most other people are playing something different.
It's nice to hang out with folks, but it's not like the old days where there were like 2-3 major games out that the entire room was playing and you were all within earshot hollering at each other. Now with so many live service games everyone seems to be playing something different and it's not as concentrated as it was back when there was just a few big games like StarCraft and Counterstrike.
They would probably be better if they grouped the room in such a way that people who wanted to play certain games were all sitting together.
So many online games are focused on progression too it makes it hard to have the level playing field all the old games had.
Cs lan parties were epic
Really struggling to name games that support LAN these days. Is it still a thing?
Civ VI, I think.
It definitely was. Some of the greatest experiences in my life. Either somewhere in these photos, or somewhere else that looked nearly identical.
Yeah I was in a big military school and every student had a computer on the LAN. Once we all got set up, Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam took over study time. It was so amazingly fun I've never topped it.
BF1942 and then the Desert Combat mod were peak gaming experience IMHO (aside from graphics). The teamwork and features those games had...BC2 and BF3 were great but they never matched the OG.
It was amazing. Computers and monitors were so big and clunky, we went through a ton of effort to move them around. And it was worth it. I fondly remember Doom LAN parties, Half Life Deathmatch, Counterstrike... It was a great time, my late teens.
These absolutely were the good old days. Before the internet was fully enclosed and captured by giant corporations, when we had connectivity but it was somewhat limited and required some effort, it fostered real community in a way that it just doesn’t anymore.
Organizing a LAN party with your friends, you all haul your heavy crt monitors and chunky towers to one kid’s basement and spent 8 hour gaming together, talking shit face to face, it was pure uncomplicated fun.
I had completely forgotten about those novelty fiber optic table lamps on pic #6.
BRO IS THAT WHAT THEY WERE CALLED?! I remember having a handheld one when I was a kid in my home country but never knew their name! I’m ordering one
I think we called them "UFO lamps" here. When I Google them, they do come up, but as fiber optic lamps as the redditor you answered, said.
I had that in 2000s too.
there's a recently published coffee table book of pics like this in case anyone is interested
I can smell these photos.
I used to volunteer for an Anime convention back in the early days of the scene and once we got big enough to have a full time gaming room it didn't take us long to realize there was a terrible smell problem in the gaming room.
It got to the point that part of the con opening ceremony speech always included something like "hey guys, remember to wear deodorant and take hygiene breaks and shower regularly during the convention".
I’ve been to all kinds of cons. Gaming cons are… well… this
I thought the internet had kinda exaggerated the problem until I went to my first comic book convention.
Jesus, the smell.
Ruined my nephew's birthday, fuck you Jacksonville Floridians
DEFCON's 321: 3 hours of sleep a night, 2 meals a day, 1 shower a day.
Corollary 0: always use deodorant
Blackhat would usually be the week before, so some attendees who came in for both had already burned through their packed clothes or given up on hygiene altogether by the time DEFCON rolled around.
Must've missed the "Whistling into a Coin Laundry" presentation.
Man I haven’t been to defcon in years but I remember many that didn’t follow that rule
And also listen to the DEFCON channel on SomaFM.com !
I used to frequent an internet cafe that opened in my town around 2000. They allowed smoking, so it eventually developed a melange of odors, including cigarettes, BO, piss, microwaved Chef Boyardee, spilled Bawls, and ozone. There were also an alarming number of grown men who would jerk off to internet porn in full view of a room full of teenagers.
That statement has continued to this day, and people still don't all wear deodorants to cons. Part of it is some people actually don't know they have a smell
Smells like someone farted in a movie theater without air-conditioning in the summer heat of South Texas.
Every time this gets posted, this is the first comment
Smells of sweat, mountain dew, and hot pockets.
I was at Dreamhack Dallas last month, and while it has improved over the years, there were still instances of insane B.O.
Axe body spray and filthy taints?
Teenage boys often have pretty strong BO. If you put a bunch of them in an enclosed room together with computers running hot and not a single window cracked open, then it really won't take long for a particularly unpleasant musk to start hanging around and I'm not referring to Elon.
Not even just boys. Teenagers in general but yah.
As a teacher I'd find it more pleasant (read: less unpleasant) walking into a mixed room after recess than all-boys or all-girls.
Axe, for all the jokes and connotations, is almost always better than rank BO.
Not when the body spray is used as a replacement for showering 😭
No, it’s literally people that almost never shower gathering in one place, filthy rainy, no axe
Came here to say this. Gratz on being first!
I smell BO, Doritos, CocaCola with a hint of ass. You?
I remember one of those parties where they had a large mobile power supply stationed at the front.
They also gave everyone a number and called batches of them (like: "Numbers 21 to 40, you may now turn on your PCs") so that they wouldn't trip breakers due to the initial power surge on flipping the power switch.
Power and network for these events was a huge challenge. Just absolutely insane requirements when you stick 1000 computers in a room.
Where is the one with bro duct tapped to the ceiling!?
Seriously all these pics and left out the most iconic one
Ok I’ll bite: Why would there be a guy duct taped to the ceiling at a LAN party?
yep wondering the same
I’m sad I was too young for this era of gaming. Would be a little too stinky in those rooms for my liking, but I’m sure the vibes and atmosphere would be immaculate
It was a lot of fun. Can make a lot of good memories and some new friends. This still exists today ,Although to a smaller extent, at PAX. They have an open PC LAN area at PAX East, I imagine they do at the other locations too
This is rare, a collection of LAN party photos and they didn't include the one with the guy duct taped to the ceiling?
How does one end up shirtless at a party like this?
Do you have any idea how much heat that many desktops would put out? The real question is how anyone would keep their shirt on.
I wonder how much the local power grid can handle. Is there a maximum limit and were they close to reaching that?
The amount of juice these older units suck up must be astronomical.
Look again at all of the big gatherings. They're either in warehouses or large commercial buildings designed with heavy equipment in mind.
Also, all things considered, older hardware actually consumed quite a bit less wattage. Most GPUs ran off the power provided by the Mobo slot. Even the highest end stuff didn't need any more than a single six-pin. This was also during the time where the highest core count in a CPU would be two and most didn't have hyperthreading. In all actuality, the higher-end CRT monitors were probably the most power hungry things there.
Yeah, definitely the CRT giving off most of the heat. I used to have to close my vents and crack a window in the winter back in those days. 2 CRT monitors would make the room unbearable.
Convention centers are the most common location for these sorts of gatherings. Definitely built to accommodate the thermal load.
In fact, many people wore hoodies because it was cold in those convention halls.
actually older PCs didnt really use that much power compared to a modern big hog dual slot GPU rig that needs its own power cable
Quakecon 2009 killed power to the city of Grapevine for a bit.
At least, that was the story around the convention when the power went out.
The dude in the middle-bottom side of the first picture appears to be shining/glistening. If that's any indication, most of them must be sweating rivers when that pic was taken.
It's warm as fuck in there.
Computers get hot when running games. CRT monitors too.
People get hot and sweaty when playing games, especially if this took place during the summer. Especially if they're playing in a tournament.
Someone needs to get on the mic and have everyone degauss their monitors at the same time
lmaoooo everyone gotta point toward mecca and degauss 3 times a day. straight outta high school comp Sci lmao thank you
Skins LAN party.
vs Shirts?
What exactly did y'all play on those computers?
edit: noticed that I sound like someone strolling through a museum lol so they -> y'all
Age of empires, starcraft, counter strike... whatever was fun and agreed upon! I spent so many hours playing diablo and starcraft on computers like that.
and EverCrack. SOOO much EverCrack.
People forget. "Sure I'll join you!" 3 hrs later... "I'm about half way there! <anyone have SOW?>"
Became a ranger just for SOW ...oh, the memories...
People would make custom FPS maps just for the LAN as well. So much fun
Here is a game list from what i can remember.
Unreal tournament
Quake 3 arena
Tribes
Aliens vs Predator
Total Annihilation
Starcraft broodwar
Dark Colony
Submarine Titans
Age of empires 2
Jane's WWII Fighters
Crimson skies
Rune
GTA 2 (always had latency issues but fun)
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed
Metal Fatigue
Counter strike (when we finally had someone that got cable internet. Everyone on the lan joining a multiplayer game was awesome)
Worms armageddon
Battlefield Vietnam
Battlefield 2 (got it for free during nvidia lan 2.0)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear
Homeworld cataclysm
Decent (caused most people to get motion sick)
Mech warrior (i can't remember what number)
Scud: Industrial Evolution
I dunno how Warcraft 3 didn't make the list. We'd have entire nights dedicated to that game, literally the game that spawned DoTA. Tree tag, Sheep tag, Element TD, Moomoo Defense, Vampirism, Life of a Peasant, literally a whole library of games for 6-12 players.
I went to one of these called Fragmart, the main attraction back then was a Counter-Strike 5v5 tournament for prizes. I remember playing with my friends (we had no idea how to competitively play) and being mopped and eliminated by the team Evil Geniuses which would eventually become a worldwide gaming org. Back then it was a nothing clan.
Basically you just play whatever you want and hang out during the tournament down times, I believe the Battlefield 1942 demo was out at this time and we had people walking around looking for us for mining/shooting down our own teams airplanes as they tried to take off the aircraft carrier.
edit: found a random website with photos, the creator of CS was a local and showed up to the lan as well it was definitely something to experience as a gamer back then https://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reports/fragmart/
For us, Quake 2, 3, counter strike, Wolfenstein, the occasional NASCAR sim and BF1942 particularly desert combat.
Lucky to have lived thru these days and attend many of these events (CPL)... what you don't see is there's an entirely other side of vendors and manufacturers showing off the latest tech, games, demos, giveaways, etc. Dang it was fun
*parties.
de_dust2 snipers only
I was there!
Early 2000's Grocer's Apostrophe's.
My computer case used to have easy carry handles...now it's sides are glass.
Parties*
How do I explain how hot that room is? It has its own weather pattern. Every nerd in the room is sweating - probably for the first time. There is no fouler place.
I remember a lot but fuck me if there were not so many shirtless hunks around. Maybe I was too focused on the screen to notice...
Cool looking party is
The girl in the last picture is not exactly what I pictured at a lan party like this.
Nothing better than firing up CS 1.6 with 3 other buddies while we joined our school's CS server, man I miss those days.
Where's the photo of that dude ducttaped to the ceiling
Basshunter - DOTA
Seeing the dudes outside with computers reminds me of the video of a guy getting caught cheating during a counter strike tournament and a mob threw him and his computer out.
EDIT:
Found it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJXTh4HMAE
Where’s my Bawls drinkers at?!
Interned at the firm that did their marketing. Awesome company! Drank more Bawls than was likely safe. They hooked the office up with a display cooler and periodically sent cases, blue and clear bottles. Those were the days.
Way more girls than the lans I went to🤣
Kids today will never understand
Somebody rollin around that Polywell redundant power supply server chassis lol
I went to a “lock-in” (overnight lan party 9pm-9am) at my then local pc gaming cafe in 2007. Mostly 13 year olds. I remember this dude brought a girl over as a date and she just looked like she hated every moment of it. Years later I still have sympathy for that girl.
I wanted one of those Alienware laptops so bad!
I love how the seemingly smallest kid (on the left) in the lower half of photo #4 has the biggest monitor by far. Thing probably weighs 50 - 60 lbs.
We had these in Australia as well. In south Australia the biggest ones I was aware of were wonderlan (mostly south ish of adelaide) and Valhalla (sort of inner west of adelaide).
Went to winderlan a couple times. Valhalla many times (and volunteered in the setup/packup team towards my largest attendance period).
Smell was less of a thing as it was held at a sports centre with excellent ventilation. Heating became a thing late at night though so you'd almost never see people shirtless.
Some videos by some of the guys who ran it or at it:
https://youtu.be/F2Bp5Njtn54?si=WUZMayry5E7998mM
https://youtu.be/JM0gAI8Es2o?si=a6xtHJes7PXEE3Yh
https://youtu.be/RvyfP1H94v0?si=JS_dI0unbqNgAPYp
Fun story, the older guy in the last video? Sat next to him a few times. He had a disability but still drove something like 3 or 4 hours from regional SA to attend.
Very disappointed not to see the photo of the kid taped to the ceiling...
I miss these Lan parties
Wow… that’s a lot of nerds in the same place
Having to grab chairs from different parts of the house (including outside) just hits different
The amount of heat from those crts had to be insane
LAN party?
Why are thier shorts off
That bottom half of the 4th pic could have been any number of weekends with my old group of friends. I can even pick out who would have been who, just by their reaction to the photo and how they're holding their arms.
I bet it stank in there
The guy with the Bawls in pic #4.
This reminds me of that photo where the one guy is duct taped to the ceiling
Uh I don’t remember so many shirtless people at the LAN parties I used to go to w friends?
These were the times
*parties*
Jesus fuck.
Damn! They had Alienware laptops back then?!
Party's 😭
Perfection.
You merely adopted the LAN party. I was conceived then born in the raging inferno that is a proper lan party. (Seriously, no combo of fans or A/C could help) also there is a distinct lack of ceiling suspended duct tape player.
Those were the days bro
*parties
LAN parties were the best!!
Peak
Parties
That looks more like a WAN Party. Mine had 6-9 people 😂
This is more like a LAN festival lol
I do miss this sort of thing. Every now and again I'd have to pack up my whole computer and lug it over to my friend's house. Super inconvenient, but was a blast.
Look at all those millionaires if they bought stock in nvidia then
Each person a 150W heater, each PC a 300-1000W heater. Looks like many KW of power coursing through that room. Those shirtless guys have it figured out.
I love the guy’s full tower with the side panel removed. That takes me back.
These aren't LAN parties, they're tournament venues.
The only LAN party here is the like 5 setups with the hilariously huge Alienware laptop (that probably ran worse than those desktops). God those were some fun times minus hauling the crts.
Wait there girls there😵
Must be AI, I spot a girl
i can smell those pictures 😂
BAWLs!!!! Bawls everywhere! I miss drinking bawls for energy!
It ain’t an early 2000’s LAN party without some bawls.
Good old times
And I was proud that I could haul my setup of 2 monitors and pc on my "gaming" chair+ backpack. Without needing to do safety check twice. Albeit I lived nearby the event so no need for sleeping bags. Pictures of the twice a year event, ventilation is so good that you need jacket inside and t-shirt outside in summer.
You forgot ceiling ducktape kid
I know it's real but it looks ai
First word that comes to mind is "swampy"
I can smell the first one
Heavy lifting and poor quality. Those were the days!
Those were the days!
The jealousy of the guy who was running Q3 at highest resolution. The warez. The random side games of Q2 deathmatch, duke3D and C&C.
1am Taco Bell runs, yelling at everyone to pause their sharing so they didn’t overload the hub while a tournament game was being played.